The medication can reduce the duration of symptoms.
- By Helen Branswell, STAT on June 28, 2018
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Polio was a devastating disease before the development of the polio vaccine. But now, this once-feared virus might help treat another deadly illness — brain cancer.
In a new study, some patients who had an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma and who received a genetically modified poliovirus lived much longer than typical for these patients.
The study found that about 21 percent of the brain cancer patients who received the poliovirus therapy were alive three years later. In contrast, among a group of previously treated patients who had the same cancer but received standard therapies (such as chemotherapy), just 4 percent were alive after three years.
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I’m excited to share my interview with Jakub Dymek on #transhumanism in the new edition of The Aspen Institute (Eastern Europe) quarterly Aspen Review magazine.
Let’s think about this: what happens when sometime in the future the whole generation of Chinese kids have higher IQs than their American peers, because they’re technologically hardwired for that? Will this be a national security issue? This is a global security issue—says Zoltan Istvan in an interview with Jakub Dymek.
JAKUB DYMEK: You are a transhumanist—member of a movement endorsing technologically augmented advancement of human species and using technology to extend our capabilities. What does transhumanist thinking bring into the world of policy debate in the US and worldwide and how politically influential it is?
ZOLTAN ISTVAN: Transhumanism influences politics today only a little bit. But at the same time, transhumanist movement grows exponentially, like 1000% every year. So I think its implications for the policy debate here in the US and globally will only grow in scale and importance, obviously. Transhumanism can define policy debate of the future, of that I’m sure. President Trump can say today that manufacturing jobs and jobs in general are lost because of immigrants. But he wouldn’t be able to say the same thing up until 2020 campaign, because it’s simply not true, and more people realize the simple fact that jobs aren’t lost to immigration, but automation. It’s tech “stealing the jobs” he is going to have to say then. And you cannot build a wall to stop technology from spreading. This is how transhumanism is already shaping this debate. And it goes beyond jobs.
Want a place to discuss science, futurism, technology and the impact of their applications on society? Join the ‘Singularity’ Discord server:
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Scientists have confirmed ′Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year. Examine what scientists found: https://go.nasa.gov/2Mwospx
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Every three seconds, a person somewhere in the world breaks a bone due to osteoporosis—a progressive disease that decreases bone density, making bones weak and fragile. Osteoporotic fractures greatly reduce quality of life, and immobilization following a fracture can lead to further bone loss which puts these patients at risk for breaking another bone.
When SpaceX CRS-11 launched to the space station last June, it carried 40 mice to the ISS National Lab for a mission aimed at improving treatment for the millions of people with osteoporosis back on Earth. The Rodent Research (RR)-5 mission successfully proved the robustness of a new potential osteoporosis therapy based on a naturally produced protein, NELL-1, and also led to significant improvements in the delivery of the therapy.
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